Not Much
“Ouch! Oh, sorry, didn’t notice you there!”
Sorry, didn’t notice you there. Those words could have been the cornerstone of Carrot Top’s life. Countless times had she heard that sentence and its different variations; she was the kind of pony others tended not to notice. Not out of contempt or carelessness – Carrot Top was simply unremarkable.
She was neither beautiful nor ugly. She was neither clever nor annoyingly dim-witted. She was neither funny nor boring, for the sole reason that other ponies seldom stopped to talk to her, apart from a few formal pleasantries. On the rare occasions when she did get invited to a social event (usually by Pinkie Pie), she mostly just stood and smiled in the background, greeting other guests who largely ignored her, or, more likely, just didn’t notice her. Yes, background: that was the right word to describe her life. No matter the angle from which you viewed any scene involving her, Carrot Top somehow, against all odds, managed to blend into the background, unimportant and unremarkable, like a piece of nice, but by no means necessary set dressing in a play where she’d never have any role.
She had few friends and even fewer enemies, she had few passions and few secrets, and even they were those common everyday secrets which wouldn’t really interest anypony, no matter how anxiously she hid them. She was a kind and polite pony, the typical ‘nice gal’ whom you couldn’t remember five minutes after asking her what the time was or where the souvenir shop was, which she probably couldn’t answer anyway. And why would she? She obviously never visited the souvenir shop, as she didn’t have anypony to send souvenirs to.
Every year she spent a week in a dusty maritime village, tricking herself into believing that she was actually ‘summering at the seashore’. Every year she wrote a postcard to her family; always the same sender, always the same addressees, always the same words. The weather was always lovely and she always wished her family were there, but she always promised to tell them about her holiday when she got home. Carrot Top’s life consisted mostly of tending to her garden, selling her carrots, probably reading some cheap books in her spare time and, when the few friends she had remembered her, having not very long, not very exciting meetings with them. This was Carrot Top: a simple mare living simple dreams.
A simple life devoid of the heights of passion and the depths of despair, yet you never saw her moping about it. She was always smiling, always there when one her few friends needed an ear, never hanging her head in angst. And indeed, why would she do so? Why would her life be less worthy just because she happened to spend more time in solitude and preferred her own thoughts while tending to her own business, instead of going on wild adventures? Who had the right to declare that a quiet life was ultimately less valuable than a loud one?
Carrot Top smiled. “No problem,” she said.